It’s time once again to go Tough Travelling with Fantasy Faction,  On the first day of each month, with a pre arranged theme in mind, we will all come up with out own individual selection of books that take us travelling through the tropes of fantasy.  This month’s theme:

STRONGHOLDS.

The Tough Guide offers information on various kinds of fantasy strongholds. For example,  you might be looking for CASTLES, complete with ‘frowning battlements, slit windows and multiple defensible spiral stairways inside’ and which ‘occasionally adorn the heights for pictorial effect’. Or perhaps TOWERS, which ‘stand alone in WASTE AREAS and almost always belong to wizards.’ Towers are often ‘several storeys high, round, doorless, virtually windowless, and composed of smooth blocks of masonry that make them very hard to climb. The Rule is that there is also a strong no-entry SPELL, often backed up by a guardian DEMON.’

I had to go total all out Lord of the Rings this week – I’ve been saving myself for a LotR frenzy and this week’s topic was perfect (just before you panic – I’m not listing them all, this isn’t an essay after all! just three or four of the very well known ones)

Minas Tirith – a quick and snappy description: white city, white courtyard, white petrified tree steward who goes up in flames!

Rivendell – everyone knows this one methinks – home to a bucketload of elves, Elrond is the main man and this is where the Fellowship came together.

Isengard – home to Saruman, who tried to become bff with Sauron – and as we all know, Sauron does not share power.  Did a bit too much hard pruning and got on the wrong side of an Ent – bad move that.

Barad-dûr – the baddest – topped with a huge eye, lidless and rimmed in flames.  One does not simply walk into Mordor and have a sleepover at Sauron’s tower.  It is folly.

Finally, this is a wild card – but, as we all know, your home is your own little castle- shut the door, settle down with a book and bottle, pipe, second breakfast, whatever – a hobbit hole:

Why not join in?

Next month’s topic will be books featuring DRAGONS.

The Tough Guide advises that Dragons are ‘very large scaly beings with wings and long spiky tails, capable of breathing fire through their mouths. They can be almost any colour or combination of colours, though green, red and black are preferred. They are always very old. Most of them seem to have flown to Fantasyland aeons ago across the void. This migration was almost certainly to get away from our world, where people would insist that they were dangerous monsters that had to be exterminated. Dragons, as all Fantasyland knows, are no such thing.’ Or are they?

And don’t forget to stop over at the Fantasy Faction to link up and check out the other entries.